REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, MAIDUGURI - The latest big Boko Haram attack in Nigeria has killed least 125 people, police said on Wednesday after gunmen rampaged through a town in the northeast, near the Cameroon border.

Details emerging of the scale and ferocity of Monday's massacre in Gamburu underscore how far Nigerian security forces are from protecting civilians in a region where US experts are preparing to help find and free 200 abducted schoolgirls.

Scores of gunmen whom police suspect were from Boko Haram, the group that seized the girls in the same region last week, surrounded Gamburu before dawn on Monday. They sprayed automatic gunfire around the market town, which was crowded with traders gathering before the heat of the day.

Witnesses said they burned down houses and, in some cases, slit people's throats. A police officer assessing the scene on Wednesday said the death toll had reached at least 125.

Demanding an Islamic state, Boko Haram has been fighting in the northeast for five years but attracted renewed global attention last month with the abduction of girls taking exams in the village of Chibok, also in the south of Borno state.

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